It Can Happen to You
A book has recently been released that reviews a number of illogical government actions against individuals or small companies. In his book, Mugged by the State, author Randall Fitzgerald recounts a number of instances occurring over the past decade. The following is one recollection that seems especially germane to the Clean Water Act legal suits that activist organizations are filing across the country.
The road master of the White Pass and Yukon Railroad in Alaska was off duty and asleep when EPA agents arrested him for a crime he was not aware of and that he did not personally commit. A backhoe operator, who was working under subcontract had been loading rock into train cars when the hoe broke an oil pipeline. A minimal amount of oil entered the Skagway River. The EPA itself conceded that no lasting environmental damage had been done to the river. Despite this, the man was given six months in prison, six months in a halfway house, and six months probation, in addition to a $5,000 fine for violation of the Clean Water Act.
With help from a legal foundation, the road master, now felon, appealed his conviction using the argument that to impose criminal culpability for an act of unintended negligence violates the central tenet that wrongdoing must be conscious to be criminal. He appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, which disagreed and upheld his conviction on the grounds that “public welfare legislation” like the CWA does not require criminal intent for the imposition of severe criminal penalties. The Supreme Court refused to hear the case in 2000.The author finished the recount by hypothesizing that anyone can now be criminally prosecuted if, for instance, his car breaks down on a hot day and the radiator boils over into a city storm drain. (Mugged by the State, by Randall Fitzgerald, Regnery Publishing, Washington, D.C.).
